Save Money While Spring Cleaning

Perhaps the fresh Spring air has inspired you to strike back against the clutter and filth you might have allowed to accumulate around your living space in the bustle of the last several months. While looking to go on a cleaning rampage and make a fresh start, you can find ways to do the job more cheaply and efficiently.

* Don’t waste the good stuff. In your haste to keep cleaning, it’s tempting to toss out nearly-empty bottles of cleaning supplies. Instead, open a new bottle, use a little of it, then empty the remainder of the old bottle into the new one.

Every springtime I throw $50 to the local volunteer fire dept – they send over a truck and three guys who come into the house with a four-inch hose. Thirty minutes later spring cleaning is over and I’m good to go for another 12-months.

Murphy’s is a soap or a cleaner only, not a polish. But it is the best thing I have found to simply clean dirty furniture. Get an old clean spray bottle, add about 1/8 cup of Murphy’s and fill with water. Use this solution and a damp, clean rag to clean your really dirty furniture. Rinse the rag in a bucket of clean water.

Furniture “polishes” only help to clean off dust and then totally evaporate, making the room smell nice. Nothing is left behind to actually protect the furniture itself. For polishing, use car wax. On tabletops use a good paste wax. On legs of items or areas with deep carvings, use a spray-on wax like Turtle Wax Express Shine.

This will help waterproof the finish, prevent dirt from adhering as much, and prevent items from “grabbing” and scratching the surface. After waxing, dust with a clean, damp rag as needed.

Apply more wax about every year, or 6 months if you clean/dust them often.

Make your own window washing solution – a gallon of warm water, a cup of vinegar, a tablespoon or two of cornstarch (well dissolved). For the exterior, you can use a bucket and scrub with a rag and then spray off with the hose. Half of my mother’s house was windows, and this method saved my life as a teenager.

Am I the only person who has never washed the outside of my house’s windows? Never saw a need. I do wash the outside of our storm door, but that’s because kids keep getting their grubby mitts all over it.

I do #3–reuse shopping bags as trash bags and recycle old towels for cleaning rags. #5–buying generic cleaners like scrubbing bubbles. The only time I don’t is when the name brand is on sale for less than the generic. And #6–use it until it’s totally empty.

The only thing I do like to buy is those floor cloths for Swiffers, but I get generic ones. I have no carpets and use them on my wood floors. They work better than the broom. In a pinch, a couple of used dryer sheets work if I’m out of them.

And I found washable dusters like swiffers at Walmart, but they took them out. A lambswool duster works the same way.